I was at the forefront of the protest against the arbitrary increment in fee hike by the high-handed University of Lagos management, which was held on the 6th of September, 2023. This is a constitutionally valid measure for citizens including students to express their grievances and air their demands as enshrined in the 1999 constitution.
To our dismay, the Nigerian police force invited at the request of the VC of that bastion of anti-intellectualism- University of Lagos- shot tear gas and canisters at peaceful students protesting the unconscionable increment in fee.
The University of Lagos management, to any discernible person, is obviously constituted by highly credentialed anti-intellectuals who never miss the chance to bely their scholarship whenever the opportunity presents itself. A key hallmark of anti-intellectualism in an ivory tower that touts itself as some sort of academia is the evasion of dialogue, discourse and debate of policies that relate to students affairs in the university community. A university is meant to set sterling examples for the macrocosm that’s the outside world; a liberal art space that tolerates dissension, student unionism and peaceful protest.
Unilag is the direct antithesis of what a liberal art university, that’s meant to be the stronghold of all stripes of intellectuals should be. The management of Unilag is more concerned with running the university like an incompetent simulation of a low budget authoritarian state. This is a management consisting of geriatrics, that engages the students in a paternalistic vein; the atmosphere of Unilag that’s meant to be a modern university is just as deeply undemocratic as the repressive Nigerian state. After hyper-inflating school fees from 20,000 naira to a whopping 190,000 without consulting or deliberating with the students who are the most important stakeholders in the school, they ensured they avoided dialogue and debates as much as possible; this hinges on the fact that they have no logical arguments to increase school fees by 600% in a country that’s renowned as the poverty HQ of the world; where 133 million Nigerians live below the poverty line (less than $1 a day) and a minimum wage of 30k.
In the fashion of anti-intellectuals with credentials, their natural instinct is the deployment of brute force via state apparatus to unleash barbaric violence on the students- who in this case are equipped with superior arguments.
There’s really no distinction between Prof. Folashade Ogunsola and all the inept, thoughtless tyrants Nigeria has been plagued with in the last 60yrs; the so-called professors helming the affairs of Unilag and the run-off-the-mill, feckless Nigerian politicians are a match made in hell. The height of it all was when the Unilag management led by Prof Ogunsola ordered the police to open fire on her own students- a triggering reminder of what the retired tyrants pulled off at Lekki Toll Gate in 20/10/20.
Prof. Folashade Ogunsola is a mindless, thoughtless and borderline sociopathic tyrant that must be made to account- and pay dearly within the ambit of the law- for her complicity in the gross, broad daylight violation of the fundamental human rights of Unilag students.